An Empress-to-be
by Nagiru
Summary: Yusuke is the boy that was, and Yuuko is the one that burns inside of him. Of her. She's the one that thrums, and the one that hides, and the one that dies.


**An Empress-to-be**

_(a.k.a., the one where Yusuke finds out that she prefers Yuuko, and Akira decides it doesn't matter, because he'll embrace them either way. Her, if that's what Yuuko wants to be.)_

**.**

**A/N:** Hey. So, I actually planned to write this back when I release The Pope, but it was side-tracked, and then I just... well, lost track of it. Last week, I had an idea, and now... well, it's complete. I guess.

Hope you like it. It's very different from The Pope, but I like both of them, the same way.

**TAGS: **slight hint of KitaShu, trans female character (Yusuke — who's named Yuuko).

**DISCLAIMER: Persona 5 and the characters belong to Atlus, not me.**

* * *

It was an accident.

A skirt left forgotten on the ground that just so happened to fit perfectly on his hips. A feeling deep down in his chest, a blush that wouldn't go away. An aching longing, the desire for something beyond his reach, for something he wasn't.

Then, it wasn't an accident anymore.

It was a choice, deliberate. It was the skirt he'd rob away, saying to be for the sake of inspiration. The make-up he read magazines to learn how to apply. The names he researched, trying out quietly.

It was the feeling that was born like boiling water, slow but insistent.

Yusuke was the boy who had been given up, the boy who was always wrong and who owed so much to Madarame-sensei.

Yuuko… She was the night — free, distant, but filled with a gentle abundance. She was a fresh start, she was the real talent behind a mask of something he was meant to be. She was the one who could take up a brush and create miracles, while Yusuke gave up every single creation. She was the calm behind Yusuke's desperation, and she was the superiority in face of every one of Yusuke's struggles.

She was the one that was so beautiful she was unobtainable.

They were one, sometimes.

Most of the times, however, Yusuke was but a face, a mask expected of the thing that had grown in their midst, while Yuuko burned away inside. Chained down but fierce. Intangible, yet so _real _it hurt. As they (_she_) waited, however, it broke away, one insult at a time.

Yusuke stood the ground, an Emperor with no crown; the boy who had nothing but lies for himself, the boy who was.

Yuuko, on the other hand, disappeared, but a whisper of an Empress she could have been, just a memory in the mind of a girl who never came to live.

**.**

Until it did.

**.**

_Thou hast established a new bond._

**.**

Akira hadn't expected the words echoing inside his mind.

Still, as he looked at Yusuke (_did he_…_ did she_…_ did they go by that name, even?_), blushing and smiling as they glanced longingly at the female clothing shop they had walked by — it made sense. The words had called them Empress, a being of life and beauty, and he'd thought it was about Yusuke's love for art. About Yusuke's life in captivity, struggling for liberty.

He'd never thought they were something _more_, even when the words called them by a clearly female name. Even when foxes, when _kitsune_, were such a female-heavy animal in Japanese folklore.

Well - as he said, it made sense. Yusuke... Yusuke loved things. Yusuke loved beauty, they loved art, they loved _love_. They loved all the delicacy that Akira hadn't expected them to like. They loved to take Akira out to places where couples went, and would usually look so _hopefully_ at girls, at couples, and Akira always thought they just… liked girls, despite the mixed signs he'd been getting from Yusuke this whole time.

Seems like they _liked_ girls. Just, not liked-liked. Huh.

Yusuke liked girls the same way they liked Ann and art and perfume. Yusuke liked girls in the way they loved everything they were and they wanted to be.

Well. _Kitsunes_ were famed to take the form of beautiful women to charm human men, once upon a time. Yusuke… Akira really shouldn't be thinking about it, especially when Yusuke clearly was in hiding, but… Yusuke was _beautiful_. They… they were so pretty they had always startled Akira.

And the thought of dressing Yusuke up, fine dresses and jewelry…

It shouldn't be that tempting. Yet, as the words had told him: this, before him, was an Empress. Perhaps an Empress-to-be, but no Empress should live like this, always hungry and dressed in rags provided to them by a neglecting guardian.

No. Yusuke might be a woman. Yusuke might be a man. Yusuke might be nothing, or they might be both. But Yusuke was Akira's Empress, and Akira took care of what was his.

That he wanted to court them made no difference at all.

_(Yuuko was dead. Yuuko was a wisp of smoke locked away in a box of glass. Yuuko was the thing Yusuke had always wanted to be, and the thing that he could never be._

_Yet, when Akira offered him a smile and a question, Yusuke… Yusuke answered Yuuko, because that was still who he… she… was, inside. That was who she had been, since long ago._

_When the first gift came, Yuuko flourished, the brightest jewelry shining on her neck, and the finest silk flowing around her legs. Yuuko blossomed under the expert hands of Ann, with new make-up and hair styling. Yuuko was something new, something old, something that burned and refused to die, because she was recognized, because she was loved just like this, because... because she __**was**__. Even when they had thought she would never be.)_


End file.
